World

Out of War-Torn Syria, an Unlikely Startup Blooms

Life in Damascus, Syria's capital, has been quieter for about six months now, but Fadi Mujahid remembers days not so long ago when he couldn't even make it to work — the bombs were too close.

Sometimes, guards at the building where he worked would call Mujahid and tell him to not bother coming in. Other days, Mujahid drove his navy blue Subaru from his two-story suburban home through Damascus' sand-colored buildings. He'd look out the car window to see clouds of black smoke rolling into the sky. On such days, Mujahid would call the employees at his online gaming company and tell them to work from home.

Yet from Feb. 18-20, around 400 people with startup ideas converged in Damascus for Syria's first startup weekend, where Mujahid coached fledgling companies hoping to come away from the event with the top prize for best business venture.

Mujahid understands why all those entrepreneurs still want to work in his war-torn nation. Call it pride, call it patriotism, call it choosing the rock over the hard place, Mujahid told Mashable that his decision to keep his company, Game Power 7, in Damascus came from a slew of variables and emotions.

"It didn’t feel right to leave the country and leave the people here when here is a catastrophe," Mujahid said. "You have to stand by your people and by your country."

Mujahid started his company in 2007, three years before the war began. Game Power 7 had the fortune to live under the umbrella of Space Toon, a Syrian media company, but plenty of people still thought he was crazy for starting an online gaming company in the Middle East, where he said the majority of people across the region are still not aware that massive multiplayer online (MMO) games exist.

"People just don't get this idea of online gaming yet," Mujahid said. "We are facing this problem of breaking the ice, of creating the consumer market for this kind of product. This is one major issue that we have been facing and are still facing."

Players would complain that their characters were exactly where they'd left them the last time they'd stopped playing, not understanding that this was supposed to happen, because Game Power 7's online games let you pick up where you left off.

“Having an online game is not something people knew about at that time," Mujahid said. "You have to create the culture."

But Mujahid couldn't shake the feeling that online gaming in the Middle East was a booming market waiting to be tapped, and would be for years to come, so he went forward with an idea that a lot of people told him was insane.

Game Power 7 spent 2007 developing and running a beta version of its first MMO game, called Rappelz. After about 10 months of work, it launched in 2008 to an audience of six, including one of Mujahid's employees.

The audience grew to 5,000 in around eight months, and the company became profitable within that same timeframe. Game Power 7's lineup of games now boasts around 60,000 active users, mostly in the Middle East's most populous countries of Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The company rolled out two more titles in 2010. By the time the war began that same year, Game Power 7 had ballooned to 120 employees.

At first, the conflict "didn't look that serious," Mujahid said, but by 2011 it was clear violence would be a part of Syrian life for the indefinite future. At one point, a rocket plunged into the six-story building that Game Power 7 works out of. It did little damage, and no one was injured, but the threat was evident and frightening.

“We had to face a decision," Mujahid said. "Do we leave the country? Do we stay? What do we do?’’

Moving 120 people to a different nation seemed like an impossible task, but they ultimately decided to stay.

Even so, his employees started to abandon the company in droves that amounted to a mass exodus. More than 90 of the 120 workers Game Power 7 employed at the beginning of 2011 were gone by the end of the year.

"The loss of knowledge was catastrophic for the company," Mujahid said. So he began making contingency plans.

They bought laptops for employees so they could work at home when necessary. They purchased 3G modems so they could work when the Internet was down, and they trained a select few game players in other countries so they would know how to operate the servers, in case everyone at Game Power 7 lost web connection, which Mujahid said has happened three or four times, once for a full day.

And they hired whoever they could.

“We had to find people with some potential and then work on the training," Mujahid said. “You need people who understand the culture of gaming, who can adapt, who can understand the social network and who have been raised as a part of this culture.”

It was hard to find anyone with game development experience in Damascus before the war, and it was virtually impossible after it had begun. So Mujahid created an academy within the company to train employees in the art of server management or online game building. It was the only way he could think to keep the company from collapsing.

Slowly, incrementally, the ranks again began to swell. Game Power 7 doesn't quite have the same number of employees as before, but it's managed to crack 100, around 25 of whom have been there since before the conflict.

"The people of my country deserve what we did," Mujahid said. "We are proud that we were able to go through all this time and survive and keep the business going."

The conflict is still raging, but Mujahid believes the future can only hold good things for Game Power 7. Internet penetration across the Middle East is going to increase with time, which means plenty more will have access to the company's games in years to come. And there will be more for them to play, as the company plans to launch two additional titles in March. Mujahid even believes Game Power 7 can attract a good investment from a few outsiders this year, something he originally planned for 2012.

These are all brash assertions, but maybe after surviving a crippling loss of institutional knowledge amid an ongoing war, fear and doubt no longer have room in Mujahid's mind.

"People have this amazing capacity of adapting to the situation," Mujahid said. "I guess we just adapted."

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is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 42 million unique visitors worldwide and 21 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco.